The present invention relates to disaster recovery systems, and more specifically, this invention relates to creating point-in-time copies on remote systems.
Data replication may be implemented for a number of different reasons, which includes data retention. Accordingly, data may be replicated between two systems which may be connected together in order to facilitate the replication of a data volume from system A to system B. However, when a replica is created on a remote system, the process experiences a time delay during which an initial synchronization is performed.
For instance, when a storage system replicates a volume to a remote system, such as a disaster recovery (DR) location, the initial replication can take a significant amount of time. There is often a requirement to mount the volumes at the DR location on a server system, which may only happen once the initial replication has completed. As a result, the total time that passes before having the volumes successfully mounted is undesirably long.
Moreover, conventional products experience additional drawbacks while attempting to create a point-in-time copy of a volume on a remote system. Some conventional products attempt to take a point-in-time copy of a volume on a source system and then perform a synchronous or asynchronous replication of that point-in-time copy to a remote system. However, the complete point-in-time copy is required on the remote system before any of the data included therein may be read. Moreover, an undesirably high amount of the source system's storage is required to perform this replication, as a copy of the point-in-time copy is also stored at the source system. Other conventional products attempt to replicate the volume itself to the remote system, and thereafter take a point-in-time copy of the volume. However, the complete point-in-time copy is again required on the remote system before any of the data included therein may be read, in addition to using an undesirably large amount of the remote system's storage.
It follows that an improved process of creating point-in-time copies of volumes on remote systems is desired.